Dutch ISPs Told To Block The Pirate Bay

from the fat-lot-of-good-that-will-do dept

For a few years now, some Dutch ISPs have been fighting a court order that demanded they block the Pirate Bay, trying to appeal to basic common sense of not making a third party liable:

"The basic principle of the Internet is that ISPs pass on traffic to their customers unfiltered, they are merely a gateway," says Niels Huijbregts, spokesman for XS4ALL. "The Pirate Bay website is not hosted on a Ziggo server, so Ziggo can't be held responsible for restricting access to the website. BREIN is targeting the wrong people."

Of course, we've seen this game before. Multiple times. Some technologically clueless court orders a block... and within a very short period of time (sometimes before the blocking even begins) services start springing up to get around the block. This leads to some free advertising for the site, but no apparent decrease in infringement.

Of course if they abuse that there will be penalties, but I am sure that will involve someone having to file a lawsuit, possibly in a foriegn country, pay a whole bunch of money for BREIN to get a hand smack.

This is the same BREIN that "somehow" came into possession of a laptop that was part of an investigation, and has on a few occasions completely screwed up the cases they push forward.

And you can't really blame the Judge as he is just bowing to the pressure the US is applying all over the globe at the behest of their corporate sponsors.
And we wonder why people hate us.